Neighbors share their Christmas spirit during the Tour of Homes

The Plains Woman’s Club held their annual Christmas Tour of Homes event last Saturday, Dec. 11. The event was planned as a way for members of the community to get in the Christmas spirit and enjoy the decorations of other homes.

The Woman’s Club started holding the event 15 years ago, when Judy Stephens was president of the group.

“We were looking for something to do around Christmas time other than pass around Christmas cookies,” Stephens said.

Stephens had looked to a group in Missoula for inspiration, who had been having a Christmas tour for years. Stephens thought it would be a good way for the Woman’s Club to raise money, and though it ended up not to be a big fundraiser, members of the club found the event very enjoyable.

“It’s a fun thing to do,” Stephens said, “and we’ve been doing it for about 15 years.”

The group has around four or five houses participate each year.

One of the challenges in organizing the event is in getting the houses all within the same area, according to Stephens.

The Woman’s Club provides cookies and drinks and a host gift to those who participate in the event by opening their homes.

Money raised in the event goes to support the Woman’s Club’s many activities. The Club sponsors a scholarship for students and maintains two areas in town, the old log schoolhouse, and the small park in town, which have to be watered and mowed and maintained. The group sponsors Shakespeare in the Parks, which comes every year, and the Missoula Children’s Theater, and has two miles of adopted highway.

In addition to being a fun little fundraiser and a great way to share Christmas cheer with others, Stephens sees another benefit to the event.

“I just love to see the architecture and the floor plans of other people’s houses,” Stephens said. “It’s just kind of fun.”

Joyce Dougan and Kathy Miller first participated in the Tour of Homes in 2000.

“ I saw that they were needing another home this year,” Miller said, “so I said, ‘We can do that.’”

Miller was a Woman’s Club member for six years, and this event was one of the fundraising things that the group did to be able to give things back to the community. For Miller, the event has always been very enjoyable.

“It’s fun being at both ends of it—going around and looking at other people’s homes and seeing how they do things, but also being a hostess and you get to meet people coming through,” Miller said. “It’s just fun to be involved with.”

According to Dougan, participating in the event took no extra work, as she and Miller pull out all of the stops when it comes to Christmas decorating.

“This is not anything we do special for this time of year,” Dougan said. “This is what our house looks like with the decorations and everything.”

For Dougan and Miller, the most challenging aspect of the event is getting everything ready in time, which means scheduling parts of the project over the span of a few days, something that takes a bit of coordination.

“It’s been a lot easier since we’ve retired,” Dougan said.

For Dougan and Miller, the most rewarding part of being hosts in the Tour of Homes event has been being able to see people from the community they don’t usually get a chance to visit with.

“It’s been very rewarding chatting with folks we don’t see all the time,” Miler said. “We’ve had some folks today that we’ve met today.”

“We’ve met a lot of really nice folks today whom we’ve never had the chance to meet before,” Dougan said.

Where some people might be put off by the idea of allowing strangers to wander through their house, Dougan doesn’t feel that way.

“We like our house, we like the way we put it together for Christmas, and I like sharing that,” Dougan said.

Daphne Boles participated in the Tour of Homes for the first time this year, though she has gone through it for several years taking the tour. She cites the persistence of event organizer Debbie Kirschbaum as the main reason she got involved.

“She’s been trying to get me on the tour for several years, and she just stuck with it,” Boles said. “She outlasted me.”

Just like Dougan and Miller, Boles didn’t find it necessary to add any decorations to what she already had in mind.

“This is how much we decorate,” Boles said. “We always decorate big for Christmas.”

Boles has found it very enjoyable to let people come in to her home and see some of her ideas and her Christmas traditions.

“I love going and seeing everyone else’s, so it’s been fun to share ours as well,” Boles said.

Boles also said that being involved in the tour is much less intimidating than it may seem.

“If you like to decorate for Christmas, you’re fine,” Boles said. “I’ve seen over the years that it doesn’t matter if your house looks like mine, which is an older home that we bought 25 years ago, and it wasn’t new then. A lot of people think that their home isn’t big enough or new enough or grand enough. That isn’t what we’re coming to see. We really want to see how you decorate, what you’re holiday traditions are.”

According to Boles, more people should become involved in the event, because if interest wanes, there may not be any more tours.

“If you’re someone who loves Christmas, and who loves to decorate, just open up you’re home and do it,” Boles said. “I hope people will say yes, otherwise we won’t have this anymore, and it’s fun.”

Boles certainly put her money where her mouth is when she convinced her sister, Deanna Lapierre-Anidom.

Lapierre-Anidom concedes that she didn’t need much arm-twisting to be involved in the tour.

“I really enjoy decorating,” Lapierre-Anidom said.

Being new to the area, Lapierre-Anidom thought that the tour would be a great opportunity to meet members of the community.

“You can’t go wrong with the Woman’s Club,” Lapierre-Anidom said.

While Lapierre-Anidom’s home was thoroughly decked out in the Christmas spirit, she felt that she could have decorated all that much more, and is already looking forward to two years from now, when she will be eligible to join the tour again.

“I really didn’t know exactly what was involved,” Lapierre-Anidom said. “The year after next, I’ll really go all out.”